#5 Products Sold Together
Guess who’s back?! That’s right my friends, the Out of the Jungle: Product series continues with its fifth installment. Today’s topic: products that go together and tips and tricks to ensure the perfect combinations! What strategies can you employ with your pre-existing stock to help you sell more items per basket?
Have you ever thought about the fact that some products are ordered together all the time, like a pair of inseparable twins? A customer who buys a new camera will also tend to look for lenses, straps, and even portable bags to go along with their purchase. Someone who buys a bicycle may be searching for other accessories, such as lights, fenders, or a helmet.
By monitoring your top combinations of products, you can very easily create special offerings, and encourage your customers to buy more from you. For instance, you may send your customers recommendations of related products based on what other people bought.
| Tips & Tricks |
Let’s take a look at some effective strategies that will help you take advantage of your top product combinations. Then we’ll go through each, one by one, in detail (below in the overview). All these techniques have a positive impact on your AOV, revenue, and margins.
- Cross-sell
- Upsell
- Promote special product bundles
- Offer volume discounts
- Set a threshold for free shipping
Cross-Selling
You can recommend certain products with another specific item. In other words: start cross-selling. This is done simply by inviting your customers to buy related or complementary items when putting a product in a basket or in personalized email campaigns after the initial purchase. It’s usually assumed that accessories have higher margins than basic products; for example coffee machine and coffee pods. You may only sell three coffee machines per month, but will end up selling coffee pods every day, so these are where you want to gain your best margins.
Upselling
People usually tend to mix cross-selling with upselling, but there’s a slight difference between the two. By upselling you encourage your customers to purchase a comparable higher-end product. You can invite them to buy a more expensive version, upgrades, or other additional add-ons. This is perfectly common, especially in the fast-food industry where staff will routinely ask customers if they want to supersize a meal or add extra seasoning, etc.
Many eCommerce platforms easily allow you to set the related products that appear on your product page. Usually, you can opt to manually select specific products, or allow them to be set automatically. You can set up different recommendation sections, for example: “Customers Also Viewed”, “Related Products”, “You May Also Like”, etc.
Both cross-selling and upselling offer distinct benefits and can be very effective, especially when used in tandem. In both cases, the objective is to help the customer get more value from your business and build loyalty and revenue from the customer. The key to success is to present products and features that truly meet the needs of your customers.
Product Bundles
Apart from recommendations via cross-selling and upselling, you can also assemble related products and sell them as a ready-to-buy package with concessionary prices. If a customer isn’t well informed, offering relevant products in a bundle helps them choose what they really need.
Imagine buying a professional camera as an amateur. You just want to take beautiful pictures and you might not know that you need a better memory card, a bag so that you don’t break it, or a polarizing filter in order to darken skies or manage reflections. You can create different product bundles according to many aspects (for example, based on the customers’ skill level). If possible, consider creating your bundles with variable options.
Extra tip: People love special offers, especially when there is a time limit on the promotion. Choose a favorite bundle of products and sell it for a special price, e.g. 30% less for two days. This will give your customers a sense of urgency.
Did you know? Product recommendations are responsible for an average of 10–30% of eCommerce revenues.
Volume Discounts & Free Shipping
This is a common and powerful method of attracting business, but also a very convenient one for both retailers and customers. Getting a lower price for more products is attractive to most shoppers. Offer a 10% discount when buying 3 units of one product, and give advice on how your customers can use them — e.g. as a gift for their friends. Just be cautious and keep prices high enough so that you won’t lose the margin on the product.
Every customer appreciates the free shipping option, which means that you have to calculate it within the overall purchase. But it also means that the customer is often willing to buy something extra just to get a discount or free shipping! We recommend setting the threshold for free shipping 15–20% above your AOV.
Check your analytics for best product combinations and base your activities on relevant information. No matter if you choose cross-selling, upselling, bundling products, offering volume discounts, or free shipping, careful attention to the numbers will help you unload all kinds of stock and your customers will appreciate it. Such offers hit customers like a magnet, or act like a sign pointing directly towards the shopping cart.
We hope you liked this post! Feel free to share your tips and tricks with us in the comment section below. And as always, stay tuned! The last volume of the Out of the Jungle: Product series, Part #6 Advanced Statistics, is coming in a month. :-)
